Gardeners share green thumbs throughout tour

Garden tour

Keith Morrow takes the opportunity to water his plants at the Sun City West Agricultural Club Saturday where he’s growing tomatoes, romaine lettuce, bunching onions and Swiss chard. The club was the Community Garden on the 10th Annual Real Gardens for Real People Tour.

Mollie J. Hoppes/Daily News-Sun

Garden tour

Master Gardener Carolyn Hillls, right, helps Trilogy residents Wendy Jones and Barb Porter choose some plants to take home at “the Secret Garden” stop on the 10th Annual Real Gardens for Real People Tour in Peoria.

“You could almost say ‘wanna-be gardener,’” the Glendale
resident said. “Sometimes I say it’s a passion, other times I call
it a sickness.”

Yet Elieff is not lacking enthusiasm, nor a desire to learn more
about the craft. That is why Elieff, along with hundreds of others,
toured a half dozen gardens around the Northwest Valley Saturday
for the Maricopa Master Gardeners’ 10th Annual Real Gardens for
Real People Tour.

From Sun City West to Peoria, Surprise and Glendale, from a vast
community garden to a backyard filled with ponds, there were a
variety of gardens on display and University of Arizona certified
master gardeners at each location to answer questions.

“Our mission in life is to help people choose the right plant
for the right place at the right time,” said Master Gardener Mary
Ann Garewal of Sun City Grand. “And to help people become
self-sufficient so they can make all those choices themselves.”

Garewal was at the Sun City West Agricultural Club’s community
garden, a 3.5-acre expanse with dozens of individual plots.

Garewal said the community garden offers the perfect opportunity
for budding green thumbs to share advice and ideas, which is the
spirit of the tour as well.

“That’s really the whole point,” she said. “It’s an educational
tool. It’s a day for people to learn about the things they could be
doing in their own backyards.”

Sun City West gardener Terry Wascher has a plot of her own in
the community garden, one she said she started working on about a
year ago. Even with a wide variety of beautiful vegetables to boast
of, Wascher said she thinks she still has a lot to learn.

“We’re all still learning,” she said. “Haven’t any of us lived
here in the desert so long that we know everything there is to
know.”

Wascher said she enjoyed the tour and the opportunity it gave
her to chat with like-minded people.

“I’m encouraged to see so many people participate,” she said.
“It’s really wonderful to see so many people interested in
gardening.”

Barbi Holdeman and her husband Paul moved into their north
Peoria neighborhood 11 years ago and have been cultivating their
backyard ever since. With several ponds in their yard and a walking
path with native plants just beyond it, Holdeman said she and her
husband were happy to be a part of the tour.

“We love to share our garden,” she said. “It’s been a long
process, but we love it.”

The Holdemans have been master gardeners since 1996, and their
reasons for joining were the same as many others.

“There is so much to learn about planting in the desert,”
Holdeman said. “We wanted to help spread the word about native
plants and let people know you can do some really amazing things
with plants found right here in the desert.”

Linda Mardel of Sun City has now taken part in each of the past
four Real Gardens for Real People tours.

“There are six people with me, and one year I think we had a
group of nine,” she said.

Mardel said she keeps coming back quite simply because she keeps
learning.

“And the gardens are really wonderful. You learn so much. I
don’t have a garden like this one yet, but someday maybe.”